


Little Christy Sunshine

by ScripStrel



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Banter, Dating, F/M, First Dates, Fluff and Humor, Loss of Innocence, Marijuana, Movie Reference, Musical References, Post-Canon, Post-Squip, Recreational Drug Use, Reefer Madness, Rifftrax References, Theatre, Third Wheels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 12:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17981033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScripStrel/pseuds/ScripStrel
Summary: Well, Christine wanted to learn more about her new boyfriend and his best friend.She really should've thought harder about what show she took them to, though.





	Little Christy Sunshine

Christine struggled not to vibrate as she walked. At first, it had been with excitement. She was going on a date! An actual date with a guy who she liked and who liked her back! And it wasn't just the half-date lunch thing from a few weeks before. She was actually going out on an actual date with Jeremy Heere. 

She wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. Gosh, what did she make of  _ him? _ He was weird, to say the least. A total sweetheart most of the time, but then he would sometimes do things like ask her out right after Jake dumped her (because Jake was jealous of Jeremy for sleeping with Chloe who was jealous of Brooke for dating Jeremy) or trick her into taking a supercomputer drug after even after she told him how dangerous they were. That... None of that made her feel good.

But most of the time Jeremy was adoring and adorable and probably something else that started with "ador—" She hadn't missed him staring at her since seventh grade but being too shy and flustered to do anything about it. She knew he had watched her with rapt attention when she welcomed him to his first play rehearsal, and she loved it. Christine was nothing if not a bit of an attention whore. She was a _theatre kid_ , after all. 

And it's not like she would've even gone out with him the first time if he didn't make her insides go fluttery, so it had to count for something that they were still going kinda strong.

So yeah, she was vibrating. Bouncing in her skin. Nervous electricity danced across her arms as she and Jeremy walked hand-in-hand into the theatre. Michael Mell trailed behind them, grinning at the show posters and the actors' program bios. Christine wasn't positive what to make of him either, but he didn't tend to cause trouble and she knew Jeremy was trying really hard to repair that friendship, so when he told her that Michael loved the movie the show was based on, she shrugged and smiled and said "bring him along."

The show in question was Reefer Madness. Christine knew nothing about it, except that her boyfriend and his buddy had seen the original movie from the thirties. They told her that it was terrible—godawful, even—which somehow made them seem to like it more. Why in the world would they like a bad movie? What benefits could there possibly be to wasting your time on movies where apparently nothing happened and the acting was so hopelessly over-the-top that nothing had any real impact? 

Michael tried to explain to her that it was a cult classic and that the  _ point _ was that it was bad. He tried to tell her about how the studio would distribute it for showings on college campuses—where people liked it for how bad it was—and used that to build a budget and a name for themselves and about how that studio went on to make major blockbusters like Lord of the Rings. And yeah, it was cool that it could all be traced back like that. Christine had nothing against bizarre cinematic history, but she still didn't see the point. 

But she was seeing the show for Jeremy. For her and Jeremy to get to know each other better. She'd done a tiny bit of research to find that the musical was significantly better than the source material, and that was good enough for her. So was seeing Jeremy's excited giggles as they took their seats. 

The thing was... The show was rated R, and Christine hadn't quite let that register. 

By the time they were walking out of the theatre, Jeremy and Michael were joking and humming the songs, and Christine was vibrating for very un-excited reasons. 

"The Lecturer!" Jeremy said for the fifth time in as many minutes. "He was so good!"

Michael shook his head. "I'm sorry, I just can't get the Rifftrax out of my head. 'Ugh, this guy again.'"

"I can't believe he responded when you talked to him." Jeremy's grin was bright and made Christine's chest buzz, and she really wished she could focus on it. 

"What? You wanted me to _not_ feign shock when he was explaining weed brownies as if we'd never heard of them?"

Christine's concern finally pushed its way out of her throat. "You knew about drugs in brownies before this?" she asked. 

Michael and Jeremy both gave her strange glances. "Uh, yeah?" Michael said.

"How?"

He and Jeremy shared a look. Michael raised an eyebrow while Jeremy curled in on himself. "I'm gonna tell her," Michael said with a smirk.

"Please don't."

"Oh, come on Jer! This is a goldmine!" 

Jeremy ran a hand over his face. "I don't want to have to explain this right now." What was this? What did he not want to tell her? Christine’s discomfort settled deeper in her gut.

"No wonder you didn't enjoy it, Christine," Michael said, pulling his keys from his pocket and unlocking his PT Cruiser, waving her and Jeremy inside, "you have no frame of reference."

Christine and Jeremy both clambered into the backseat. She fastened her seatbelt and curled into his side. He was strangely tense, considering his happy chatter from earlier, but he wrapped an arm around her all the same. Gosh, she really did like him. He was so sweet. Unlike the characters in the musical, Christine  _ did _ know how Romeo and Juliet ended, but she was still very tempted to fall into Mary Lane's train of thought, no matter how horribly flawed the metaphor. She could think of Jeremy as her Romeo if she wanted. "I don't need a frame of reference," she said. "The whole show was about how evil marijuana is."

Michael laughed as he started the car. "No, it's really not. It's about how evil propaganda is."

"They had a book burning pile in the finale, Christine," Jeremy pointed out. 

Well, yes. That was true. Very fair assessment. But— "But they all went crazy after they smoked it!"

That made Michael laugh so hard that he had to pull over before he'd even made it out of the parking lot. "Oh my God, Chris."

She could feel the blood rush to her face as Jeremy failed to muffle his giggles as well. "What!?"

"I—I can't," Michael said, taking off his glasses to wipe at the tears beading in his eyes. "Jer, you tell her." 

Jeremy had seemed to loosen up a bit. The laughter was still in his voice as he said, "That's not how weed works, Christine."

She pouted. What did he mean that wasn't how it worked? Sure, she knew it was dramatized. It was a musical! Everything was dramatized. She knew it was unlikely it ever led to cannibalism or anything, but she also knew that DUIs were a serious issue! And that it was called the Devil's Lettuce for a reason! And that every adult she'd ever met had always told her that drugs were bad and cannabis was a gateway to even worse, life-ruining addictions. 

Michael, having finally caught his breath, turned in his seat to grin at her. "You do know that I've done pot, right?" he asked. "That's like the only thing most of the school knows about me besides the Play thing."

...Okay… Well, she had  _ kinda _ known that. Maybe. She hadn't really thought about it. It wasn't like he was a  _ druggie _ . To her, he was just Jeremy’s friend, and hopefully her friend eventually. She fumbled for a response. "I mean—" 

"So I can tell you from experience that it does  _ not  _  work like that. It calms you way down," Michael said. "I promise I've never gotten stripped by hallucinogenic weed dancers and I haven't ever had hysterical laughing fits either."

"Who are you kidding? You  _ absolutely _ get giggly when you're high," Jeremy said. He entwined his fingers with Christine's and ran a thumb lightly over the back of her hand. She didn't know if he was doing it on purpose to comfort her, but she hoped he was because it was working.

"I don’t laugh like a maniac, though." Michael finally started the car up again and pulled onto the main road. 

Jeremy shook his head and smiled down at where Christine had tried—unsuccessfully—to burrow into his shoulder and escape. "The original movie was made to scare parents as part of anti-drug nonsense," he explained, finally giving her something that didn’t make her want to soak her brain in laundry detergent. "It became a cult classic because the actual stoners knew that it was so horribly wrong and also because it was such a bad movie in general. We watched it because these guys we like who make fun of really bad movies did a bit on it. This loser—” he gestured at Michael—”was actually high when we first watched it.”

Michael made an indignant noise mid-lane change. “So were you!”

Christine bit her tongue and tried very hard not to pale at the knowledge that her boyfriend had  _ also _ done Reefer, but she still caught the way her shoulders stiffened. 

“You were the one who thought they were serious when they said everyone but the stoners could hear the soundtrack when there wasn’t one,” Jeremy said. 

“How was I supposed to know it was sarcasm?”

“When  _ isn’t _ it sarcasm?”

Michael glared and smirked back in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, well  _ you _ certainly took the furry slash fic joke to heart."

Jeremy spluttered and went firetruck red. “I wrote  _ one!” _

“And it sucked ass, by the way," Michael said through his laughter.

“I was twelve!" Jeremy protested. "What, you expected me to write the next Great American Novel in seventh grade?”

“I expected not to ever have to read about the Phone Guy getting it on with Golden Freddy, that’s for sure.”

Jeremy's embarrassment gave way to a certain indignant air and Christine wasn't sure if she found it attractive or humiliating-by-association. “Excuse you," he said, "it was the security guard, not Phone Guy. It was a reader insert.”

“That’s even worse!”

“Please stop,” Christine finally managed to choke out. She was doing everything she could to hide in Jeremy's shoulder again. “I don’t need to know. Just… You're not—not going to try to convert me or corrupt me or whatever, right?"

"What?" Jeremy's voice layered with concern in an instant. "No, of course not. I'd never pressure you into anything."

Christine's brain supplied the word  _ again _ just as Michael seemed to mutter it under his breath. There were certain downsides to trying to date someone who'd almost started the apocalypse for you. Of course, Christine didn't say anything, just let Jeremy pry her out from his side to share a nervous smile. 

"Are you sure?" she asked. "Because I really don't want to suddenly turn dominatrix or anything."

Michael laughed, now drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as they sat at a red light. "Little Christy Sunshine," he sang. "You know, Jeremy would probably be into that." 

She could feel the heat waves radiate off of Jeremy as he made a choked noise. His ears went strawberry red, and even Christine had to laugh. This was nice. They'd seen a great show—even questionable content couldn’t distract her from an amazing performance—and she was sitting here laughing with people she liked. Even if she didn't know exactly what to make of the situation, she could tell it was good. Better than expected. 

"I, uh—wh-whatever," Jeremy squeaked, still resembling a stop sign. "They made up the sex stuff, too."

"Yeah, that's true," Michael said with a shrug. "I’ve never humped anything when high. Although there  _ was _ that one time we tried shotgunning and it turned into us trying to teach each other to kiss—"

"Which was a total disaster, because we were both total noobs." Jeremy finished.

"Well," Christine said, confidence and adrenaline returning now that she was comfortable and happy again. She walked her fingers up Jeremy's arm, smirking up at him from under fluttering eyelashes. "Little Christy Sunshine will just have to teach you, won't she?" 

Jeremy made another garbled noise as his face ignited again and she and Michael erupted into laughter. Yeah, this was okay. 

She didn't quite know what to make of it, but she would definitely make it work.

**Author's Note:**

> I bet you can guess what I saw recently.  
> I realize that most of this rests on oddly specific references to the Rifftrax of the movie and the particular production of Reefer Madness that I happened to see, but I also couldn't help making the connections as I watched it, and felt I had to write this, if only for myself.  
> I feel like I've been writing Michael's POV for too long. I couldn't quite get it to feel like Christine here. Oh well. 
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


End file.
